The Fantasy Armory · Chapter 2

Reading a Weapon Entry

Every weapon in this book uses the same format.

Arming Sword

Broadsword, Knightly Sword, Jian, Spatha, Viking Sword

The Fields

Also known as. Up to five alternative names for the same weapon, drawn from different cultures and periods. These are not variants with different stats. They are the same weapon under names other tables use, and they are there so a GM can rename an entry to suit their setting without touching a single number.

Names are placed by mechanical shape, not by region. The katana sits on the Longsword because it is a hand-and-a-half cutting sword with a two-handed option, which is precisely what that stat line describes.

Skill. Most entries use Light Melee or Heavy Melee. Thrown weapons use Light Ranged, and the fist weapons in Chapter 4 use Unarmed. If your Universe uses a single undifferentiated Melee skill, use it for every melee entry in this book; nothing else changes.

Damage. Every close-combat entry in this book, Unarmed through Shields, lists damage as a modifier added to Might, dealt before Resistance on a successful hit. Add 1 for each Success beyond the first, as normal. A weapon's printed value is the modifier alone: a dagger lists +1, meaning three points of damage in a Might 2 character's hand and five in a Might 4 character's, because the weapon is transmitting the wielder's own force rather than generating its own. That is the whole difference between this book and Chapter 12: a thrown weapon leaves the hand and answers to Agility and Ranged instead, and prints a flat number that does not care who threw it.

The ceiling is +4. Greatsword, Halberd, and their kin sit there; nothing ordinary goes higher. +5 exists exactly twice (the Executioner's Axe and the Maul, plus the Longsword's own two-handed grip), and each is a stated exception, not a quiet outlier: a capstone weapon or a grip that trades away a quality to earn the extra point. A dagger at +3 or +4 would not be an exciting design choice; it would be a mistake, because nothing about a dagger justifies it.

Crit. The number of net Boons that must be spent to inflict a Critical Injury. A Breakthrough may always be spent instead. Lower is better. This book uses the full range from 2 to 5, and it is doing more work than it looks like: a Crit 2 weapon and a Crit 5 weapon with identical damage are entirely different weapons at the table.

Range. Where the weapon can attack. Most melee weapons are Engaged only. Weapons with the Reach quality list Engaged, Short, and a few list Short alone, meaning they cannot strike an enemy who has closed inside them.

Enc. Encumbrance. This book assumes your table tracks it. Several weapons here are priced as though carrying them costs something, and if Encumbrance is ignored, those weapons are undercosted.

Price. What a fair seller asks. See below.

Availability. The core rules tag describing where the weapon can be obtained. See below.

Type. The weapon's damage type. See below.

Qualities. Special rules, defined in Chapter 3.

Price and Availability Are Two Different Questions

Price answers what does it cost. It is derived from the weapon's qualities using a fixed model, which is why drawbacks make weapons genuinely cheaper rather than just flavourful. A war scythe is a competent reaching weapon that costs 20, because Inaccurate, Awkward 3, and Fragile refund almost everything Reach and Sweep cost.

Availability answers can you find one. It is independent of price and reflects how exotic or specialised the weapon is.

Tag	Meaning
Common	Widely available to ordinary people. Any village, any market.
Restricted	Legal, social, or institutional permission is required.
Military	Intended for soldiers, guards, or organised conflict.
Rare	Difficult to find, expensive, or culturally limited.

The two are independent. A Pavise costs 45 at Availability Restricted, cheap to make but not something a village keeps in stock, while a Kite Shield costs 100 at Availability Military.

Running an isolated or frontier setting? Raise Availability across the board and leave Price alone. Running a wealthy trading city? Do the reverse. The stat blocks never change.

Rescaling prices to your Universe

Every price in this book derives from six base values, one for each damage tier:

Damage	Base
+0	20
+1	40
+2	60
+3	90
+4	150
+5	300

Multiply all six by the same factor and the whole economy moves while every relative price stays intact. If a loaf of bread costs 5 in your Universe and these numbers feel high, halve them. If your currency runs in silver pieces and a sword should cost 15, divide by ten. Nothing else in the book needs touching.

One adjustment is already built in. Weapons that are mostly wooden shaft with a small metal head, spears and staves and clubs, cost half the calculated price. That is why a short spear costs less than an arming sword, despite the spear being mechanically the stronger weapon. A spear is a stick, and its historical ubiquity comes precisely from being the cheapest effective weapon anyone ever made.

Damage Type

Every weapon lists one or more of Thrusting, Cutting, or Crushing.

These do nothing on their own. Damage types exist to support an optional armour system that is not in this volume; it is in The Armourer. If you are not using that system, ignore the field entirely. No rule in this book references it.

The field is printed now so that the armour rules can be added later without restatting the whole catalogue, and because it tells you something useful about a weapon even as pure description.

The three types divide by what the attack does to a body: Cutting draws an edge across it, Thrusting drives a point into it, and Crushing transmits force through it.

Once armour types are in play, the intent is that no weapon answers everything. Axes are committed cutters and struggle against plate. Impact weapons crush and are the answer to it. Spears thrust. Swords carry two types and cost more for the privilege, and polearms carry two or switch between them and cost more still.

For anything not statted in this book, including most creatures, assume Crushing unless the fiction obviously says otherwise.

Weapons With Two Profiles

Weapons with the Versatile quality list two profiles and are used as one or the other, chosen when drawn or switched as a maneuver.

Horseman's Hammer

Martel-de-Fer, Pick Hammer, Bec-de-Faucon Hammer

Read this as one weapon with a choice attached, not two weapons.

The second profile always trades. It gains something and gives something up, every time. The hammer's spike trades away Knockdown to gain Pierce and a different damage type. The longsword's two-handed grip trades away Defensive to gain damage. A Versatile weapon should present a real question every round, which it cannot do if one profile is simply better.

Where the header line reads Type: see profiles, the damage type changes with the profile. That is the most valuable thing Versatile does, and it is why the poleaxe was what armoured men chose to fight other armoured men.